A’s close to buying land in San Jose?

It’s been a seemingly endless saga for the A’s, but they may finally be closing in on actually buying land for a new stadium in San Jose.

San Jose city officials are meeting today in a closed session to discuss selling a few plots by the Diridon station to A’s co-owner Lew Wolff. City mayor Chuck Reed estimated that the cost would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $24 million but, like everything else on the market these days, the final price could actually be a bit lower.

If this sounds like a lot of money for a project that has neither been approved by the voters of San Jose nor Major League Baseball, you wouldn’t be wrong. But it’s all part of Wolff’s plan to put “as many ducks in a row” as he can.

One of MLB commissioner Bud Selig’s main sticking points for not approving Oakland’s plan to move to San Jose has been the absence of a lot. Soon — if the deal goes through — that may no longer be an issue.

“It’s so that Lew can go to the commissioner of baseball and say, ‘I control the dirt,'” said Reed in an interview with the Mercury News.

Now, just because Wolff is ponying up for a big land buy doesn’t mean the A’s are clear to move. The biggest challenges still lie ahead: winning approval from the residents of San Jose and MLB.